The use of self-service terminals (SSTs) in the sale and hiring of physical media such as digital versatile discs (DVDs) is increasing in popularity as customers become more used to the self-service experience. Such DVD sale and rental kiosks bring with them the normal attendant benefits to both retailers and consumers that self-service terminals have brought to other areas, such as reduced queuing times, increased choice and ease of transaction, etc.
However, there are a number of particular issues associated with the sale and hire of DVDs including the return of damaged or poor quality media items to the kiosk. This problem is particularly acute in rental transactions where returned media is prone to reissue to a future customer. If damaged media is reissued to a future customer the customer is likely to have a poor viewing quality of their rented DVD. This leads to the customer having a poor experience of DVD rental kiosk usage, due to their time being wasted in renting and viewing an unwatchable DVD, which may dissuade them from using a DVD rental kiosk in the future, i.e. reduced customer loyalty.
The most prevalent form of damage to DVDs is scratching of the plastic surface of the disc such that the disc cannot be read satisfactorily by the customer's DVD player.
Furthermore, if the rented DVD is particularly severely damaged there is the possibility of the DVD damaging the renters DVD player, with consequential liability issues.